A favorite personality
I was pleased when the New Yorker published Fierce Pajamas this year. This book is a great collection of seventy-five (I think?) years of New Yorker humor. Classic old stuff and great new material. I was relieved to find a favorite essay included, since I had lost the page I tore out of the magazine when I received it about 5 years ago. In this piece, the author talks about the decline in number of ‘personalities’ in the world of tennis (such as John McEnroe and Ilie Nastase) and then goes on to deconstruct the meaning of ‘personality.’ He boils it down to being a synonym for a word that starts with a and end with e (not Aristotle) with an ‘sshol’ in between. This essays can still make me laugh until I cry. And it started our familial use of the word ‘personality’ for when we meant the more vulgar personal assessment.

Which brings me to my point. Michael Medved has written a good review of Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine. Roger and Me was a good movie. Some family members found Mr. Moore to be ‘grating’ but I thought he had a certain honest, homespun charm. His short-lived TV series was OK. I thought he was kind of cute in a scruffy sort of way. He was on the Today Show last week. His interview confirmed what dawned on me when I read Stupid White Men one night at work (the fact that I could finish my work and read this whole book gives an approximation of its substance). Michael Moore is just a ‘personality.’ He’s either become one or it was just latent before. He doesn’t even look cute. My husband asked for a critique of his ‘look’ one morning and the easiest way to convey to him that he looked slovenly and not as bright as he is, was to say, “You’re starting to look like Michael Moore.” I try not to be critical of people’s looks, as this is superficial and something not always within a person’s control. But Mr. Moore is a personality and he’s doing a good job at looking the part. Oy, and then he opens his mouth and erases any doubt..........